YOUR Local Bridge

More than 150,000 of our bridges need work. Story here. Are the ones you drive across safe? Click here to find out. (And here to see the breakdown by state.)

A PLAN TO RENEW OUR INFRASTRUCTURE

Thanks to Stephen Pizzo for those links. And for this one to a 2008 Popular Mechanics plan for upgrading our infrastructure across the board –the power grid, levees, bridges, and the rest.

To someone who understands no mechanics (me), the illustrations are fascinating and inspiring. We should do this stuff! And, yes, public works – done by private companies – are paid for with tax money. So instead of building a 240-foot yacht, if you make $100 million a year, you might only get to build a 160-foot yacht (think what you’ll save on fuel and how many more marinas you’ll be able to slip into) – but you would also be helping to finance the renewal of the country that made your income possible in the first place.

Of course, it’s not just yacht-owners who will need to chip in. Once the recession ends – perhaps even before – almost all of us blessed with six-, let alone seven-figure, incomes will likely face somewhat higher taxes to help fund America’s resurgence.

Compared to the sacrifices our grandparents and their grandparents made, of course, it’s nothing. And compared with the hardships faced daily by those getting by on $20,000 or $40,000 a year, it’s also nothing. But it will still pinch. The trick will be to find ways to be happy anyway. Surely, some people were happy from 1940 to 1986 when the top federal bracket ranged from 90% to 50%.

No?

And those poor bastards didn’t have the nearly-free astonishments that we’ll still have even if our taxes do go back up to Clinton levels. For starters, we’ll still have virtually unlimited, virtually free, virtually instant entertainment right in our shirt packet. How can that not be fun?

The massive investment we should make in infrastructure will put construction workers back to work and get the economy moving again.